Narcissist Worries About Social Media

And finally the big, big question for me is what to do with my micro social media empire in 2013.  I monitor about 300+ RSS feeds of military and alternative media news streams. Much of what I see is bad. I thought the world should know more about the bad so it could make better decisions.  So I decided to use social media as my tool to help push information that I feel is relevant to the world to any who will listen. I've been somewhat successful.  But my growing commitment to spreading alternative media has got me worried a bit. Here are the things that weigh on my mind. Maybe similar things weigh on yours.

• The news I push is often depressing.  It is weighty stuff that deals with dark subjects.  I hear that if you want to be a positive person you put your focus on the positive. I focus almost exclusively on the negative, not because I find pleasure in the negative like some do, but because the negative at least to me is real.  I feel like people ignore the negative, allowing bad things to fester and become worse.I want to get in people's faces and shout "This is real. Quit ignoring this. Help stop it!"  A lot of the time I feel like I'm an information "sanitation engineer". I deal with information people don't want to hear. People have said I am "over informed".  Sometimes I wonder if they are right in the sense that the information people chose to ignore I take up as a burden upon myself that I was never meant to carry in the quantities that I do because it is too dark and depressing. Am I cheating myself out of a better quality of life because I'm in the info-gutter all the time? Is it worth it? I don't know at this point.
• I don't know who I am dealing with.  This frightens me a little bit.  Racist people have RT me. I know some people I deal with on social media are not what they seem. I know some people by just a few tweets / post that I have seen come from them, but I don't know their full history nor their true agendas. I worry that false perceptual associations will be made between me and others that should not be made. I worry about guilt an association that I'm largely ignorant of and would change if I knew the full extent of that perceived association.  And I do fear at one point in the future there will be a crack down on free speech, and these spurious associations, even though I'm about 90% as careful as possible to detect and rid myself of them, might burn me down the road.  I've already been burned a few times tweeting things that I didn't properly vet, I worry about this going forward. I don't want to be lumped in with a group that if I really knew who they were I would not associate at all with.
• And speaking of future crack downs, much of what I tweet / post is not flattering to those in power. Historically this tends to come back and haunt people who do this.  I'm too much of a small blurb on the radar at this point to be...well too immediately worried...but I am getting "bigger".  I fear that if a crack down happens I'll be big enough when it comes to be a target but not publicly visible enough to make anyone but a few notice when I'm gone.  Not a good place to be.
• I'm gullible. I don't like to admit that, but it is important that I do so.  I try not to be, but I am.  Probably everyone is to a degree. I come to the information gathering table with some biases. Sometimes these biases lead me to push information that is misleading and in some instances untrue. Also because I'm dealing with dark sometimes subjective topics, knowing the real truth about a manner is tough. I and the authors of the info I'm pushing are ultimately guessing. I am guilty in the past of pushing stuff that is junk. I don't like to do that. Sometimes I worry that the alternative media that I rely on for information is playing me and people like me just like mainstream media is playing those I consider "asleep."  There may not be a complete way to win at this game. So why am I playing?
• I really have no illusions about wanting to be some sort of warrior fighting for what is right in a world of darkness. I info fight now because the pain threshold of doing so is very low. No one has threatened me seriously. Americans talk tough. Some of them mean what they say and have a backbone. Most are just talk..  If there is fascism coming to America, and I'm telling you all the indicators of such are there, if you go against it you might look behind you, expecting all the loud voices to be charging up the hill with you, and find yourself very lonely.  I don't want that to happen to me. Social media is just talk. Venting. Some are learning from it, becoming "awake", and I think I've played a positive roll in directing info resources to those who are really seeking to better understand what is going on in the world.  But many of us on social media are just ineffectually venting. Worse, if full blown fascism does come, we through our talk are essentially building our own metaphorical and literal ropes to hang ourselves with through our tweets, blogging, facebook post, and other social media activities.  I worry that this year will be the time to get out or double down in resisting and calling out the indicators of fascism that I see growing.  A big part of how deep I go will be the level of commitment I am convinced of by those who bark loudly in social media. If I really do judge that they are all talk, I'm out, unless God directs me otherwise.  I will (if I'm smart), grab my wife and bolt to a nation where with our unique circumstance we might be able to live a decent quiet life outside of the USA. My ancestors bailed their bogus regimes to come to America, if need be I will keep up the tradition of relocating to liberty as I am able, though I would be sad to go. I'd rather see people EN MASS really start pushing back against things that our government is doing (the government's misdeeds being either done by incompetence, knee jerk reactions, or by design) that seem to be ushering in an American authoritarian regime.  If most people just said NO, and meant it, I think our government would change for the better.  I'm not seeing that forceful NO, and I'm afraid of where our nation is headed.   
• Yet in all of this, I feel compelled to push this info, to be a "watchman" as some call it. I won't be so presumptuous to auto assume that this is my calling from God, though I leave the door open for this. Time will tell with myself and others if this is the case. I do know I'm having an impact as I amplify the reach of the real heroes in alternative media that uncover the hidden that should be public and challenged. I just yell "look" to what they do and, to sometimes my surprise, people do look and are changed.  It has been encouraging to see people occasionally say that the information that I'm pointing them too has made an impact on how they think and that my efforts have meaning.  This is also a responsibility though. Is what I'm pointing to correct? Is it better to "know" what is going on when there is nothing really that will be done to stop it, or is it better to leave people alone in their blissful unawareness? I struggle with this, a lot.  I guess that is ultimately their call, as they would not be reading the links I put out there unless they weren't already seeking greater truth on some level. But I still wonder.
• Through all my social media, I try to interweave bread crumbs to God. Provide a little hope. Slip a few tweets in a day that point to Christian Q & A sites to hopefully spark some interest in people that will lead them to a saving relationship with Jesus. Individually this is more important than saving a nation from corruption, as Jesus said (roughly) "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?".  The response to these "bread crumbs" have been pretty underwhelming.  Everyone wants to know about the NWO but know one wants to know abut the God who will save humanity from it.  If you know about everything hidden in the dark, but you don't know the one person in the light, Jesus, who can save your soul, your quest for knowledge was in vein.  You have failed. All is lost. You are ruined...forever!  I think perhaps I tweet too much about politics and the darkness but I'm not leaving enough bread crumbs so to speak, or maybe I should be directly engaging people for Christ.  I know I need to clean up my act a bit before I directly start trying to lead individuals to Jesus, but if just one, one person I can see come to the Lord and get saved by me pointing them to Christ (note the actual conversion is all God and between the person and God alone, I can only point, I don't have the power nor would I want the power to do anything else) then I can say that my social media micro empire was a 100% success.  Two would be better.  Three even better. You get the picture. So going forward I might change it up a bit, bring God more into the conversation. I bet I will lose a lot of "followers" by doing so, but heck, so did Jesus.

So I guess this mini novel is all about me questioning my place in the so called alternative social media ecosystem.  Should I be here? Am I doing right? Should I stop? Should I be even more aggressive? Should I by worried about being here? Am I just being a narcissist blowing smoke up my own rear? How can I be more effective if I stay? Should I change focus? Am I unknowingly being used? How can I minimize threats of being involved? Can those threats in the future even by mitigated? Heck is it even too late for them to be mitigated so I should just go all in...or should I quit now and hope I either have avoided a "list" or by walking away get off what ever list I'm on?  If you read all this you are a trooper (you waded through lots of rambling), and your thoughts are welcome.